[lbo-talk] Salon on Andrea Dworkin

John Adams jadams01 at sprynet.com
Wed Apr 13 08:18:57 PDT 2005


Here's the link: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/04/12/dworkin/print.html

Two paragraphs stand out. I see myself (at least a version of myself) in them as much as I do Dworkin:

"She was one of the last remnants of the extremist spirit you encounter when you go back to the source materials -- leaflets, underground newspapers, manifestoes -- created right in the moment, the spirit that called for, and firmly expected to get, permanent revolution, the abolition of work and the summary shooting of "pigs" in the street. It was the kind of spirit that had teenagers planting bombs in post offices for hazy reasons. For Dworkin, it eventually evolved into the idea that rape victims should be allowed to personally execute their attackers. That idea was grandiose, it was idealistic and, like Dworkin, it was ultimately self-defeating."

and

"Dworkin came out of and contributed to a subculture of feminism that specialized in this kind of irresponsible overstatement. A certain style developed: Throw out a handful of lurid, grisly anecdotes as if they amounted to an indictment of an entire class of people (usually men), who, if the worst of them can be shown to be guilty of such outrages, must all be equally responsible for them. The shock will soften your audience up enough to keep them from asking just how typical such atrocities really are and how widely condoned. Yes, they do happen, but like the handful of kidnapped little girls during the summer of 2002, such horrors can be made to seem epidemic when they're actually a rarity. Meanwhile, the much less exciting, if far more common, troubles of women who are simply trying to feed their children on inadequate wages, or get a decent job, fall by the wayside."

John A



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